Selling a trip to the symphony or a modern- dance recital has never been easy in this country, especially when that pitch is upset by violent tectonic shifts in the larger consumer landscape.

Performing arts groups know this all too well. Their constant struggle to draw new audiences and bolster old ones puts them in a tight spot. Ticket buyers are dwindling these days, yet arts groups must maintain a life-preserving bottom line while trying to make good art for the rest of us.

It’s a problem that looms larger than the communities that individual dance troupes and chamber ensembles serve. Yet rarely do the arts get together to form a national front to combat shared concerns.

These topics will be at the fore of the National Performing Arts Convention, which takes place Tuesday through Saturday at the Colorado Convention Center. The unprecedented event unites 4,000 artists and administrators from 30-odd opera, theater, dance, classical music, choral and advocacy organizations.

Amid the panels and performances, they will tackle the larger issue of distraction — namely the explosion of entertainment choices, from Internet movies to better-hyped sporting events — that has many wondering why they even need the concert hall.

“The overarching feeling is that people have more options in terms of what you could broadly call entertainment at home, everything from DVDs to music to video games,” said Bill Ivey, director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy. “It’s a trend, and while it hasn’t translated into a crisis, it’s at least a cause for concern.”

Ivey, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 to 2001, said various forces are making the arts world take a new look at how it grabs and holds on to people. New technologies and massive demographic shifts in the U.S. population (the aging of core audiences, immigration, niche markets) demand attention; otherwise the arts’ ability to connect with people will continue to slip.

“One important theme of this conference is the possibility of finding some common ground and a shared agenda that would improve the situation for all the performing arts,” Ivey said.

Countless recent studies have coalesced around the same conclusion: Participation in the performing arts is changing drastically and, in many cases, declining. Fewer people are going to operas, plays and dance performances, according to the federal government’s Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. That decline is even more pronounced among 18- to 24-year-olds.

A 2002 SPPA study found alarming drops in ballet attendance, for example, with a 40 percent decline between 1992 and 2002 for 18- to 24-year- olds. That compares with a 19 percent drop among the overall population. Neither is positive, but the study failed to measure whether young people were more active in other art forms, like digital-music composition, video game design or rock show attendance.

Most arts organizations agree that a strong participatory culture is necessary to keep them relevant, but the “attendance-only” definition of “participatory” may be in need of an update.

And, no, adding a robot conductor to your symphony won’t do the trick.

The performing arts cannot simply be a gimmick or diversion, said Sandra Gibson, president of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. They need to be a part of our daily lives, both by appreciating them and getting involved.

“We need to be in the public psyche and at the dinner table conversation, not plugged-in and plugged-out,” said Gibson. “I happen to think that art and culture are rights of citizens, but instead of setting the climate for debate in our field, we’re reacting to the position we’ve been put in.

“If we want to fight the commodified view of arts in the U.S., we’re going to have to mount the arguments.”

Taking on technology

The new cultural landscape, with all its mysteries and glimmering opportunities, repeatedly presents itself as a land to be conquered. See that online niche market? Smash and grab it! Those marauding file traders? Don’t let them through the gates! That gash left by a disappearing audience? Let it bleed.

At least that’s the gladiatorial pose some record labels and movie studios have taken in suing their copyright-infringing customers into oblivion, all the while failing to understand why things have changed.

But that approach does not extend to the whole of the performing arts world, which is subject to the same vicissitudes of technology and fragmented audiences. Instead of angrily defending their turf, some arts groups are innovating — and with great success.

Long the country’s largest and most respected opera company, the Metropolitan Opera in New York had begun to slip from its vaunted position in the middle of this decade. The solution? Combine the savvy of a tech startup and the strategic approach of a corporation.

“The biggest danger for aging performing arts companies is that they become unimportant,” said Met general manager Peter Gelb. “Organizations that face declining audiences need to figure out artistic solutions first, but they also require business planning and the ability to take risks.”

That risk took the form of the Met’s new media plan, which included a Sirius Satellite Radio station, live audio streams on its website and digital downloads on Rhapsody.

But by far the most successful component has been the Met’s live hi-def broadcasts (or cinecasts). Gelb was inspired by the promotional launch of David Bowie’s 2003 album “Reality,” which digitally simulcast the London concert to countries across Europe.

The Met’s inaugural 2006-07 HD cinecast season featured about 200 participating movie theaters. That number tripled in 2007-08. A performance of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” for example, sold 136,000 tickets in April. Eleven theaters in Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Pueblo and other Colorado cities participated in the screening and its two encores.

During the 2008-09 season, the HD broadcasts are expected to reach 900,000 people at 800 movie theaters in 17 countries. The Met’s definition of a donor is $125 or more, and since the HD broadcasts began, it has added 4,000 more. Box office receipts have also risen 12 percent.

“The Met was considered to be the most conservative and rigid of performing arts institutions,” Gelb said. “The fact that we could dramatically change in so many ways in such a short time has been an example to others,” including San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera.

But Gelb cautioned that his mission of updating and reconnecting to mainstream culture is tricky. He is careful not to alienate older patrons, and anyway, the experiment has barely begun: The company is just now appreciating how revenue from HD ticket sales and ancillary broadcasts is affecting its bottom line.

“It’s a fantastic, self-sustaining marketing tool in a way, and it’s more than paying for itself,” he said. “It’s actually providing a real revenue stream for (the future). But it’s an ongoing struggle. No matter how successful a nonprofit performing arts company is, it’s always in the hole. ”

There is no substitute for seeing a live performance, but many people lack geographical or financial access to the country’s 110 professional opera companies.

“I think it’s fantastic that this mutually reinforcing system of live and electronic access is available now,” said Marc A. Scorca, president of Opera America and co-chairman of the arts convention. “I want people to partake in both so that their lives are infused with these arts.”

The new customer

Part of engaging an audience is understanding its composition. The massive demographic shift in the U.S. population over the past 30 years presents unique challenges — and opportunities.

The graying of the baby boomers allows some performing arts organizations to rest on their laurels with a “Why worry?” attitude, said Steven Tepper, who co-edited the 2008 book “Engaging Art” with Curb Center colleague Bill Ivey.

Older people have traditionally been stable donors and audience members, and boomers will soon create a huge senior population in America.

“It is a reasonable position to take for any single organization, but for the larger arts field that’s a shortsighted view,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the extent to which the arts are about change, and it’s ironic that we would resist change. You’ve got to be able to tap into new energy and audiences as a field.”

“Engaging Art” addresses these questions head-on. Various chapters deal with immigrant arts participation, or the relative value of cultural capital. Others question why the performing arts world spends less time thinking about demand and more about what people ought to have — even if they don’t actually want it.

“When you’re talking about a growing Hispanic population, for example, it’s really about finding ways to expose that population to more fine arts,” Ivey said. “Penetrating community centers and moving the symphony or art museum out into neighborhoods is a way of auditioning for them.”

Sandra Gibson, whose Association of Performing Arts Presenters represents 2,000 organizations, believes more research should be done on how different communities experience and create art.

“The traditions they bear, their way of celebrating — it’s a whole different set of considerations,” she said. “More of the same may not work.”

Bringing new audiences into the arts isn’t just about featuring compositions by members of a specific audience or ethnicity, although that helps. It’s also about a forging a new definition of “participation.”

Ivey said the sports world offers an oddly appropriate analogy. Amateur and school teams, for example, provide a deep and casual level of participation in different sports at different levels, and their audiences are loyal.

The European tradition of the fine performing arts, however, has long emphasized excellence, which has the effect of devaluing experimental voices and day-to-day performances. Taking out the curatorial or middle-man role could give performing arts a much- needed shot in the arm.

Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s “21st Century Choreography Competition” invited national choreographers to submit 5-minute video samples via YouTube. The public voted on their favorites, narrowing the field to three finalists. NBC’s competition-style “Clash of the Choirs” raised hackles — and publicity — for choral groups.

“Some thought it was the death of choral music,” said Ann Meier Baker, president of Chorus America and co-chairwoman of the National Performing Arts Convention. “People asked, ‘Is it a good or a bad thing?’ It’s not ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but ‘sometimes.’ ”

In other words, taking an unequivocal approach to any discipline is limiting. A place still exists for classics and the experts that neatly tend them. It’s just that, for a while, the larger performing arts world has seemed reluctant to discuss it.

That’s one of the themes of the arts convention and its caucus-style meetings, which will culminate in a “21st Century Town Meeting” that members hope produces a blueprint for the future.

“In order to compete with the multitude of choices consumers have today, the fine arts will have to step down from the mountain now and then, and really engage audiences on their terms,” Ivey said. “I think many are starting to do that.”

has covered everything from comedy, music, film, books and video games to breaking news, business and technology for The Denver Post. He's the author of the Speck/Fulcrum nonfiction book "Mock Stars" and an occasional contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire and others. As a Dayton, Ohio native, his love of Guided by Voices is about equal to his other obsessions, including Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, "Mr. Show" quotes and Onitsuka Tigers.